The World

Well, Kosovo has been independent for about 24 hours, and so far things are going more or less as the British and Americans anticipated. The assumption was that there would be trouble within Kosovo itself – and violent protests in Serbia. But that Russia would restrict itself to diplomatic protests and would not escalate matters by recognising would-be statelets that want to break away from Georgia, like South Ossetia or Abkhazia. So far, that’s more or less how things are working out.

But unhappiness about the new state-of-affairs is not confined to the Balkans or Russia. As the FT reports this morning, there are several European Union countries that are refusing to recognise Kosovo – foremost among them Spain, which is worried about the implications for Basque separatism. The whole situation is a reminder that “European unity” can quickly shatter, when EU members feel that their basic national interests are at stake. The situation must be particularly awkward for Javier Solana, a Spaniard who is meant to be the very embodiment of EU foreign policy.

Concerns about “self-determination for all” are even more acute outside Europe. Philip Bowring offers an interesting take on Asian attitudes – and the concerns self-determination causes from China to India to Indonesia. For me, the Kosovo declaration is reminiscent of East Timor’s declaration of independence from Indonesia. In both cases, the new countries were so small and economically fragile that statehood seemed – on logical grounds – distinctly ill-advised. But – in both cases – their entanglement with the country that they were breaking free from was so full of blood and bitterness, that independence eventually looked like the only feasible option.